A blog about genealogy and thoughts about the various roots and branches of my family tree as well as the times in which my ancestors lived.Included are the West, White,and McFarland families.WARNING:DO NOT TAKE ALL OF MY FAMILY RECORDS AS GOSPEL. ALWAYS CONFIRM YOUR OWN RESEARCH!

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Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Well, it’s that time of year when folks make New Year’s resolutions and we genealogy bloggers are busy making our lists.

So here’s mine.

One, to break that John Cutter West brick wall.

Two, to spend more time on my maternal line. I’ve found somuch lately about Dad’s side of the family that I feel like I’veneglected the Whites and McFarlands. So I’ll research more andblog more about them and try to break down those brick wallsas well.

Three, to get my files better organized and correctly cite mysources.

Four, try to make it out to Ohio some time next year to visitwith my Aunt Dorothy and my cousins, including Diana andLouise.

Five, try to get OUT to do research at the BPL main branch, theNEGHS, the Massachusetts State Archives and the HinghamFamily Search Center.

Six, get all the pictures scanned. I am considering rearrangingmy work station. At present, the printer is on the top shelf andgetting up and down to place or remove pictures may be good formy health but it sure slows down the process. I may swap theprinter/scanner with the cpu.

So as I usually do on days off, I started the day with breakfast atthe computer and browsed the genealogy blogs, but I think manyare taking the holidays off or have been rendered hors d’ combataftertheir Christmas celebrations!

The weekly NEGHS enews email had a link to a story in theBoston Globe concerning the naming of the John Alden HouseHistoric Site as a national historic landmark.

Then I tried googling a few family members and found a fewbits of information at two sites others with Maine relatives mightnot know about.

First, at the Andover, Maine website I found the obituary of 2xgreat granduncle Asa Atwood West and then a transcription ofhis family gravestone at the Old Woodlawn Cemetery in Andover.

Then I found a site with an 1840 Census of PensionersRevolutionary or Military Services and found among othersBenjamin Barker, the brother of my ancestor Jonathan Barker,was living with Moses Coburn, Jr, the son of my ancestorMoses Coburn, another war veteran. The younger MosesCoburn was married to a Hannah Barker but I’m not sure as yet if she was a daughter of Benjamin or a niece.

I worked at the bookstore from 9 to 6 Christmas Eve and thenwent to my sister’s house after a quick stop here at the hobbithole to pick up the gifts. The adults all got gift cards and my twoyoungest nephews got radio controlled cars and a transformertype toy each, but my two older nephews had so much funassembling them I might have to get them some too next year!

My sister and my brother in law Pete gave me a digital cameraand once I get the controls figured out there’ll be more pictureshere.

Dinner was the traditional lasagna, meatballs, and salad withpastries for dessert and enough other munchies to fill us up andmake me sleepy. So I left at 10:30 for the drive home andeventually found my way to bed.

Today…well… I think I was more tired than I thought. I sleptinto the mid afternoon and woke with a stuffed up nose. There’sbeen a cold going around at work, so I decided to just stay inhere today and relax. I have the next two days off from work aswell as part of my usual work schedule so hopefully by FridayI’ll have licked this. I surfed the web a little to see what I mightbuy with the gift cards I got as presents and then did a littlegenealogy work, copying some files from my PAF5 file to theFamily Tree Legends file and doing some editing in the process.

Anyway, I hope everyone reading this has had a quiet, peacefuland wonderful holiday!

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Christmas Eve was sometimes hectic in our family, especiallythose years when we lived in Dorchester, because Mom and Dadwould drive around to Mom’s cousins’ houses to drop off gifts forthe kids. Sometimes my sister and I went along but as we gotolder and more responsible we’d stay home while the gifts runwas made.

Then there where Christmas Eves where we were all homeand spent the night wrapping presents for each other or otherrelatives. I think I liked those quieter nights best.

The past two decades or so Christmas Eve is spent at my sisterand brother-in-law’s house. Gifts are given out and opened andmy sister’s youngest son Mike(now in his twenties) often endsup with the handing out the gifts duties since he’s the youngestfamily member. Then there’s food served buffet style. At thatpoint, I am just trying to stay awake because I’ve been dealingwith the last minute shoppers at the store all day and a goodmeal on top of that makes me want to take a nap. And nextday I go back over for dinner.

All in all Christmas Eves over the years have been good ones,sometimes saddened by losses of loved ones but we all enjoybeing together and relaxing after the end of the Christmas rush.

This post was written for Thomas MacEntee's Advent Calendarof Christmas Memories over at destination:Austin Family. Besure to go over there and check out the links to other postsfrom my fellow genealogy bloggers!

Every Christmas Mom would break out the Andy WilliamsChristmas Album to play on the stereo. There was also a NatKing Cole album and a Mitch Miller “Sing Along With Mitch”Christmas edition. But for me, even rock and roll dinosaurthat I am, it’s the Andy Williams album that “feels” likeChristmas to me.

As I’ve gotten older and my musical tastes expanded, I findmyself listening to New Age and Celtic Christmas music. AndJosh Groban just put out a holiday album that we’ve played atthe bookstore since Thanksgiving and it’s easy on the ears.

As for caroling, well, there are some things that one shouldnever do in public and in my case, singing is one of them!

This post was written for Thomas MacEntee's AdventCalendar of Christmas Memories over at destination:Austin Family on the topic of Christmas Music.

Be sure to go over there and check out the links to other postsfrom my fellow genealogy bloggers!

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

The 38th Carnival of Genealogy is up over at Jasia’s Creative Gene blog and the topic is Y2k. Between the Cog and TomMacEntee’s Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories atDestination: Austin Family there’s a lot of good reading outthere from my fellow genealogy bloggers. I’m falling behind onreading all the ACCM posts but luckily the Christmas season inmy family when I was a kid lasted through January, so I cancatch up with it all!

I’ve been made part of footnoteMaven’s Choir of GeneaAngelsover on her blog. I’m amazed by the things we can do withcomputers these days and I’m honored to be includedwith such an interesting group of people.

Meanwhile, back in the genealogy forest of family trees, I’m doinga bit of research for a follow up about Camp Devens and theinfluenza outbreak. I’ve been backing up my PAF file andother documents to that flash drive I purchased and I brought itto work the other day where it’s now stored in my locker. I alsoshare whatever I find with relatives and here in my blog since it’s not just my genealogy, it’s theirs as well!

all the other items she’s sent along! I don’t know how difficult itmight be to obtain these elsewhere, but the information on themis invaluable to someone researching their family history andgenealogy.

In my grandfather’s case, I googled the “Camp Devens” (whicheventually became Fort Devens) and then looked at the dates

on Pop’s papers. That along with the email that Pop had

contracted double pneumonia during his enlistment, told me

that he’d been at Camp Devens during an outbreak of the

Spanish Influenza in the fall of 1918. Quite probably he became

ill because of his duties as a hospital orderly during that time.

I’ll have more on that later.

“Honorable Discharge from the United States ArmyTO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:This is to certify that Floyd E. WestPrivate First Class Hospital DetachmentTHE UNITED STATES ARMY, is hereby HONORABLYDISCHARGED from the military service of the United States byreason of Pursuant to W. D. Cir.I77 A.G. O. Nov.21/1918.

Said Floyd E. West was born in South Paris, in the State of

Maine. When enlisted he was 25 years of age and by occupation

a Farmer. He had Blue eyes, Brown hair, Medium complexion,

and was 5 feet 5 1/2 inches in height.

Given under my hand at Camp Devens Mass. this twelfth day ofMarch, one thousand nine hundred and nineteen.A. O. Davis(?)Lt. Col. M.C. U.S.A.commanding.”

Monday, December 17, 2007

I mentioned back in July that Aunt Dot and I exchanged somefamily research at my nephew Paul’s wedding. One of the itemsshe gave me was her childhood memories of my Dad. Anotheritem was a photocopy of my Grandfather West’s WW1 dischargeand his enlistment record as shown above.

I think the two papers were folded together which would explainthe dark lines across the pages. In the transcription below, I’veput a question mark after any entry I’m not certain about. I’vealso italicized the handwritten information.

I received an email from my cousin Diana tonight as I was typingthis and in it she passed along information from Aunt Dot thatPop was an orderly at the Camp Devens base hospital, that hewas only in for a short period before contracting doublepneumonia and that he was shipped home after his recovery.

I’ll have more to say on that after I’ve posted the transcriptionof his discharge form.

In my reply to Diana, I remarked that today I realized thatbetween the service records and the memoir that Aunt Dotgave me earlier this year I have learned more about Pop thanI ever knew before, and much more than I know about myother grandfather!

It’s been a long time since the last time my Christmas stockingwas hung up for Santa.

When I was small we didn’t have a fireplace so I’m not surewhere we hung them. Perhaps stuck to a doorframe withthumbtacks? Although one year we had a cardboard red bricklight-up fireplace that I hadn’t thought about in years until justnow. And on Capen St. in Dorchester I think we hung them onthe “windowsill” of the wall mural my Dad made. Mom pickedout some large picture of Cypress Gardens and it was hung onthe wall, framed by a wooden fake picture window frame so itlooked as if you were looking out at all those flowers!

The house in Abington had a real fireplace (and a real picturewindow) so the stockings were hung by the chimney, etc. and anew one was added for my kid brother. A year or so after thatwe hung one for the pets as well. But over the years as wemoved one place or another there would be Christmases whereno stockings were hung at all when we couldn’t figure out whichbox they’d been packed away in.

As for what was inside, as I mentioned once before, there wasone year I got a lump of coal, but for the most part it would becandy canes and an orange or apple. One year there was the newwristwatch my folks bought me.

I’m not sure where those stockings are these days. My best guessis that they are downstairs in my storage bin packed away withthe few Christmas tree ornaments that have survived!

This post was written for Thomas MacEntee's Advent Calendarof Christmas Memories over at destination:Austin FamilyBe sure to go over there and check out the links to other postsfrom my fellow genealogy bloggers!

Here’s the other two parts of my grandfather Floyd E. West Sr.’sWW1 furlough papers for Nov.30th-Dec 10th, 1918 to visit hisfamily back up in Upton, Maine. Pop was a good soldier. He wasback in Camp Devens by Dec. 8th!

This document confirms what I’d been told by my folks aboutPop serving in some sort of capacity in a military base hospital.If I’m reading it correctly, it says he held the rank of PrivateFirst Class detached at the Medical Department at the FortDevens Base Hospital.

Never having been in the military myself, I don’t know if theforms have changed much over the years but I’ve never seen areference to furlough papers in genealogy books and certainly notof any from WW1.

Of course, I don’t imagine many would have survived. After all,it was just paperwork. It was the furlough itself, the time awayfrom camp that was spent in relaxation or in visiting your lovedones that was the most important thing to a soldier!

Thursday, December 13, 2007

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I once worked several yearsfor a New England based toy store chain. At the end of theChristmas Party my first year there(this would be the year beforethe incident with the car and the tractor trailer box)I was calledinto the warehouse office and told that they didn’t need me thereafter the holiday but they could use me at the Dedhamwarehouse where they stored all the returned damaged toys.

So the week after Christmas I found myself in a small warehouseamidst stacks of Chatty Kathy’s and See and Say’s and Barbiedolls. Sleds that just needed to have a screw or bolt replacedwere broken up with sledge hammers.

It seemed like such a waste when I found out the other toyswould be returned to the toy company for credit. Couldn’t theybe repaired and given to kids?

No, I was told. I won’t tell you the reason I was given because it’spretty disgusting but given the nature of retail it’s not surprising.

So I went from being a Santa’s helper to being the Grinch’shenchman.

Eventually I was sent back to the main warehouse. A year later Ileft the company and found another job.

And the toy store chain? It went out of business a year or soafterwards.

I like to think of that as a cosmic lump of coal in their corporatestockings.

We’ve never had any of the perpetual fruitcakes hanging aboutfor weeks or months in our family. We’re a practical bunch. If ittastes good, we eat it. If it doesn’t, well, out it goes!

I have however invented a mythical fruitcake named Margaret.

Like distant cousin Tim Abbot over at Walking the Berkshires Ihave been a role-player for years although mine has been onlineinstead of tabletop Dungeons and Dragons. One of my charactersis an eccentric Scotsman and last Christmas he gave anothercharacter Margaret the Fruitcake as a Christmas gift.

It seems it was baked by a female relative who passed awaywhile doing so and the Scotsman believes (he says) that her spiritinhabits her final fruitcake. Margaret has been exchangedbetween family members each Christmas but last year it wasgiven to a young squire. Various adventures ensued including ajailbreak where Margaret was used as a weapon and thedisappearance of the haunted fruitcake sometime aroundmidyear.

Yeah, I know.

I’m nutty as a fruitcake

This post is part of the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memoriesat Thomas MacEntee's Destination:Austin Family.Visit it forlinks to the Christmas memories of other genealogy bloggers!

Randy Seaver’s post about the databases at the LDS Family Search Record Search site prompted me to make a return tripover there. I ran searches on the names of a few relatives andcame up with images from the 1900 census for Asa Ellingwood,Frank Barker, Amos Hastings Barker and John Phelps West andtheir families.

I also came up with two errors, one correctable, the other not.

The first one is the correctable one. I originally searched for mygreat grandfather Philip Jonathan West and when I found theindex entry for him it listed his father as a “Jonathan D. West”.Looking at the image of the census page I can understand howthat “P” could be mistaken for a “D”. So I clicked on the Feedbacktab and sent an email to the FamilySearch Lab to point at themistake and explain how I knew it should read “Jonathan P.West”. I also thanked them for making it possible for me to evensee that image!

The other error…well, this is something that can’t be fixed andit certainly isn’t the fault of Family Search. I think it insteadmight be my ancestor Asa Freeman(or Freeland) Ellingwoodplaying some some sort of prank.

You see, on the 1900 Census he gives his father’s birthplace asEngland. Since it’s pretty well documented that John EllingwoodJr. was born in Maine I can only guess as to how or why “England”would be entered.Perhaps Asa was tired of answering questionsand made that answer up to see if the census taker would acceptit?

At any rate, it’s there on the census to confound his descendantsand creat a genealogy mystery!

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Back in the 1980’s I began thinking about the approachingmillennium. It was cool that barring the unforeseen I was goingto enter a new century with my family. I wondered what it wouldfeel like, what we’d all be doing when 1999 left and 2000 began.

By the end of 1999, all I wanted was for that year and century tobe done and gone. 1999 has to have been the worst year of mylife so far.

My mom was diagnosed with cancer and was gone by mid-year.

The bookstore chain I worked went out of business and thestore I managed closed within a few weeks of my mother’s death.I can’t recall if it was before or after because compared to Momthe store was insignificant.

I had to find a new job and move to a new apartment. I took aposition with a video store chain and between working andmoving managed to put myself in the hospital for 2 days. By theend of the year it was becoming clear the job had been a mistakeand I would leave it by the following February.

The apartment hunting turned out better than the job huntingand I’ve been here for 8 years now.

As New Years Eve drew closer I worried over whether mycomputer was going to survive. My online friend Diana was alsomy computer guru and helped me find and install a patch thatwas supposed to help.

I’ve had to work on New Years Day for many years so I spentthe night before the usual way. I stayed home and counted downthe clock with the tv on and chatting online with friends. Midnightcame, the century turned and both civilization and my computercontinued to function. Either I called my sister or she called me,we exchanged “Happy New Years!” and after I waited up to seein the Millennium with Diana(she lived in Missouri at the time) Iwent to bed and then got up for work the next day. Thiswill be the first New Year in ten years without that vigil withDiana.

So, the worst year of my life ended and I did what millions ofpeople all around the world do when faced with hard times.

As far as I can recall, none of the family ever attended aprofessional entertainment event during the holidays.

I’m sure there were school events for my sister and brother butthe only one I recall that I was involved in was in the first orsecond grade. It was some sort of Christmas lights event at theLinden Elementary School in Malden that was held outside themain entrance at night. We sang carols and yes, played some onour flutaphones.

The next year we had moved to Dorchester and I was at theFrank V. Thompson School. I don’t remember any holiday showsthere and I certainly didn’t go around playing a flutaphone inthat neighborhood!

This post is part of the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memoriesat Thomas MacEntee's Destination:Austin Family.Visit it forlinks to the Christmas memories of other genealogy bloggers!

I had to take a break from the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories Carnival because to be completely honest, I didn’thave anything to post. Our family didn’t have the wherewithal totake Christmas vacations or trips. In later years my folkswere active in the VFW and often visited the vets at the BrocktonV.A. Hospital but my younger brother Phil was the only one of uskids who ever went along with them. My entry for the next topicwill be short but there will be others after that which hopefullywill have a bit more substance to them.

Meanwhile, I found a nice surprise in my mailbox tonight when Igot home from work, a large manila envelope from my cousinDiana out in Ohio. She and her Mom, my Aunt Dorothy (or Dot),sent along some copies of things I haven’t seen before:

Copies of the Family Births, Death, and Marriages recorded in thebible of my ancestress, Louisa Almata(Richardson) West.

A copy of a document granting my grandfather “permission tohunt and trap fur-bearing animals” on land owned by DavidPingree and the estate of David Upham Coe. It is dated October8, 1925 .

A copy of a newspaper clipping of an article from the OxfordCounty Advertiser dated Friday February 8,1905 entitled “TheValue of A Compass”. It tells the story of how Enoch Abbott,Joseph Chase, and John West(my 3x great grandfather JohnCutter West) became lost in the woods and how John West usedhis head to find shelter in 1845.

I’ll be scanning (and making back up copies of all of these) and sharingthem here soon!

Saturday, December 08, 2007

It’s funny how some Christmas memories fade and some endure,especially when it comes to gifts.

We weren’t poor but we weren’t exactly well off either when Iwas young. Santa’s gifts were often determined by budgetconcerns but he always managed to leave us clothes and sometoys. (although one year I got a note with the other gifts:“Dear Bill, I owe you one telescope. Santa Claus”)

Ads for a forthcoming movie bring back more memories. OneChristmas eve my sister and I could hear the Alvin and theChipmunks “Christmas Song” play over and over while ourparents laughed. When we asked why the song kept playing wewere told it was the radio and to get to sleep before Santa came.(of course by now I already knew the Awful Truth). It turnedout Santa had left us a portable record player along with a copyof the record!

I still have the gift my sister gave me one year: a wooden chessset, the kind that doubles as a box to hold the chessmen. It’sover thirty years old now.

As I grew older I learned that giving gifts was as much fun asgetting them. We didn’t have a color tv so one year when I wasworking at the toy warehouse I put a portable Magnavox colortv on layaway and gave it to my folks for Christmas. That tv lastedfor years, even after my folks got a larger console set. It migratedfrom bedroom to bedroom passing from my kid brother to mysister’s kids back to my brother’s kids until it finally gave up theghost.

And then last year, I got a gift from a group of great friends, thecomputer that I’m using right now to preserve these memories.

Oh, yeah! I got the telescope!

This post is part of the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memoriesat Thomas MacEntee's Destination:Austin Family.Visit it forlinks to the Christmas memories of other genealogy bloggers!

I don’t recall many holiday parties from my earlier childhood. Inour family folks were too busy working or shopping at Christmastime. And when we lived in Dorchester the apartments weren’treally big enough to hold large parties in, although there mighthave been one or two. If so, they would have followed the rules ofother adult parties my folks had: after saying hello to the adults,my sister and I would be sent off to our beds to eventually fallasleep while listening to the adults in the other room laughingat Rusty Warren records. We wondered what "roll me overin the clover" meant.

As an adult, most of my Christmas party experience has been atwork, including one at a now defunct toy chain warehouse(moreon that job later) when I was in my early twenties. It snowedwhen I left for home, my car at the time was an Olds 98 andbeing in a hurry to get home, I didn’t completely clean the rearwindshield. I backed up, turning the car around….

….and smashed my rear windshield by backing the car up undera tractor trailer box front end as if it were a big rig hooking up.

The good news was, my Dad worked in the auto glass repairbusiness.

The bad news was I had to call him and tell him what I’d done.

It was an …umm…interesting conversation.

This post is part of the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memoriesat Thomas MacEntee's Destination:Austin Family. Visit it forlinks to the Christmas memories of other genealogy bloggers!

Friday, December 07, 2007

My Mom was a working mother for much of her life so she wasn’tone for major cooking projects except on weekends. Except for afew times cookies were created with the help of the PillsburyDough Boy although I do recall some forays into Christmas treeshaped sugar cookies.

Cookies at Christmas time usually meant the Italian cookiesserved at my aunt Emily’s with that light frosting and the red andgreen sprinkles. As an adult I buy them at the supermarket onlyaround this time of year.

But while my mom wasn’t really into cookie baking, she did like tomake coffee cake and sponge cakes. And when we were living inDorchester she learned how to bake mundel bread from ourJewish neighbors. She also made cupcakes and cornbread.

There was one other dessert dish Mom made and I’m not sureif it was something that her mom Aggie had done during theDepression. Mom would send me down the street to the storeon Milton Ave to buy a box of Jiffy Bake Mix and she’d makebiscuits, then would top them with strawberries and whippedcream. I didn’t care for the taste of the biscuit so I’d make surethe strawberries had really soaked it before I ate it!

Christmas sales and advertising would be banned until the daybefore Thanksgiving.

BlackFriday would start at 9am local time sharp. No midnightmadness. No lines at store doors at dawn. People would insteadspend more time at home with their families and store personnelwould not have to leave Thanksgiving gatherings early becausethey need to go prep the store for opening.

Shoppers would behave in a mature, civilized and orderly fashion.If the store has run out of some item the shoppers would nottreat the salespeople as if they have suddenly become the spawnof Satan but instead would move on to the next items on theirshopping list.

No national chain stores open on Christmas Day. Christmas isChristmas, period. Forget about sales for one day and let youremployees enjoy the day with their families. Mom & Pop storescan open but half the day only so that folks who run out of milk orbutter can get some quickly and easily.

People would hold doors open for other shoppers and give uptheir bus seats to senior citizens. Young children would not throwtemper tantrums and older children would not curse at theirparents.

Everyone would have someplace to go to and someone to be withon Christmas Day. No one would be alone and no one would becold or hungry.

Drunk drivers would be unable to start their cars and so have totake cabs or other means of transportation.

All our Armed Forces would be home to safely celebrate theholidays with their loved ones.

There’s much more that could be added, I’m sure. But I’d behappy with these for starters.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

My family was fortunate in that we never lived in the sort of placewhere Christmas outdoor decorations becomes a blood sport.Yes, people strung lights in their shrubbery or along their housegutters but there was never anyone determined to turn theirfront yard into the Norh Pole’s Southern Branch Office.

Now for light shows back then you went to someplace religious,like Our Lady of La Sallette Shrine in North Attleboro or the localcemetery with it’s entrance lit up, or even just cruised a stretchof highway to look at the neighborhood lights that might be seenfrom a distance as you drove by.

We didn’t really have outside lights ourselves until we left Bostonfor Abington. Up until then the only lights other than on ourChristmas tree were the electric candles we put on windowsills.But at the house Dad did the obligatory shrubbery and gutterdisplays as well as one other spot: the apple tree in the front yard.

Dad had experience both with wiring and tree climbing so puttinga string of lights up in a small apple tree was a piece of cake. Itwas the taking down part that didn’t seem to work at least forthe tree. One year, long after the other outside lights were downand packed away, the lights still were hanging in the apple tree.I’m not sure exactly when he took them down but I do know itwas well after Spring had sprung. I think they were even pluggedin once or two nights. I don’t know the reasons why they werestill there: my Dad’s sense of humor, perhaps? Or maybe aninstance where Dad’s Maine stubbornness and the Irishstubbornness of my Mom brought about some impasse on the issue?

On my way home the other night from work I noticed at leastthree of those large hot air snow globe scenes on front lawns.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

The astute reader will have noted that the previous two postsdeal with Christmas memories and this post will as well. That’sbecause I’m one of many genealogy bloggers taking part inThomas MacEntee’s Advent Calendar of Christmas Memoriesat his Destination: Austin Family blog.There’s a lot of great posts so take a look and enjoy!

Today’s topic is Christmas cards.

I don’t get a lot of Christmas cards, mostly because I don’t sendout a lot myself to begin with. I get some from the family and afew from friends but since I’m not much of a social animal there’sno more than perhaps a half dozen each year sitting atop my tv.

In years past the amount of umm…cardage…fluctuated. When Iwas a kid there were a lot of cards, usually taped to thedoorframes much the same way that Terry’s Mom did at theirhouse or sitting atop tables.

When we moved to Abington they were displayed across themantel piece or taped around the edges of the mirror above it.The years when my folks were actively involved in the VFWbrought the highest number of season’s greetings. Mom wouldspend a few hours herself signing and addressing cards to besent out. But as she and her generation of family and friendsgrew older the flood of Christmas cards dwindled. Several yearsMom even had some unused cards left when she finished.

I tend not to like sending “mushy” cards so I usually try to findsomething funny. Although this year I may be giving people alook at a certain dancing elf via e-mail!

When I was a kid the holiday dinners rotated between our placeand my Uncle Ed’s and Aunt Emily’s. If Thanksgiving was at ourhouse, then Christmas would be at theirs. Since Emily is Italianthe holiday had an extra element for the dinner. We’d eat all thetraditional food: turkey, stuffing, veggies, and then after that wascleared, Aunt Emily’s mom Nonnie Cappadano would bring outthe Italian food: lasagna, meatballs, stuffed sausages, and othergreat dishes. To this day at Thanksgiving there is usually lasagnaserved along with the turkey and I had leftovers of both senthome with me here afterwards.

Since we now usually gather at my sister’s for Christmas Eve toopen gifts and eat, the food is a bit less formal, sometimes buffetstyle with meatballs, cold cuts, and salad. Then Christmas Daycomes another big meal.

And that’s how an Irish Catholic family eats a lot of Italian atholiday time.